First Thanksgiving

I hope that you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving! I have had a great week, and things are going great here!  I am excited for our dinner today, it looks like things are going to turn out pretty good. We'll have cornbread, chicken, pumpkin pie (we've pureed the pumpkin and made up a crust), mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (hopefully there are yams at lucky's, and then we can have yams instead). But things are going good. The work is going really well, and we are teaching probably close to 20 people right now. We are teaching 5 families too! So it's all super! Combined with the other elders, we had 10 investigators at church, and we are teaching 11 families. Super awesome!
I have to tell you a little bit about our awesome investigator. On Saturday we went and visited them, and we had a great lesson, and then we were talking with them. They said that they will try super hard to go to church, but they aren't sure if they will have enough money for gas to go there and back, so they would have to see. We know that he has been out of a job for 2 years, and just hasn't been able to find anything for some reason. He knows English and has computer skills which will get you almost anything. All he wants is a job that makes $50 a month too, nothing too much. (I would say average salary is $50) They have a house, and they have food, but they can't afford a $6 water filter thing that they have here, and we learned that he and his wife have been drinking unclean water and been having some serious health problems. All this and all he can say is, "I am so blessed because we have food, we have a house, we are happy, and I know that God is watching over us." And he wouldn't let us leave either until we had eaten dinner with him. I walked away from that house in tears. My heart was full when I left that house. What humble, humble, grateful people. Such an example to me. He also has an incredible desire to serve God. He was a pastor in a protestant church, and a missionary too, and spent 2 years in an MTC learning from the Bible.  He has such excitement to spread the gospel; he asked us the other day, "Elders, when do you have free time? I want to take you to Kampong Thom for a day to teach the gospel to the people there." And he has such a desire to serve God and preach the gospel. God surely prepares the hearts of people to hear the message of the Restoration, because he loves the Book of Mormon. On Monday he had read to Mosiah 3 (in one week) and said that the prophecies are much clearer than the Old Testament. On Monday we extended an invitation to be baptized and he readily accepted, and he wants his wife to be baptized too, and I think that both of them will be baptized on the 31st of December, and confirmed on the 1st of January. It will be a great end to 2011 and start to 2012!

Loving Seim Reap!

I had a great week, and things are going well here. 

The mission is super excited because of our goal to establish 5 stakes here, but we have some good hard work ahead of us. To have stakes we need to have 5 units; so we want to split Siem Reap into two branches, and add another branch in to Battambang’s 2 branches. Then each unit needs 15 Melchizedek Priesthood holders who are full tithe payers, and we need another few on top of that. I am not sure where we’re standing right now, but we’ve got lots of work to do! And we are excited to be a part of this.

I heard some other news as well! Vietnam is basically open for proselyting now! How amazing is that?! So I have a cool story for you. Elder Le Nyguen from the MTC had originally had a mission call to Mexico, and then it was changed to Cambodia, Vietnamese speaking. He is now going to be sent to Vietnam to preach the gospel there! They still can’t wear name tags or approach people; other people have to approach them first, but things are really starting to look up!
This week while my companion was in Phnom Penh, I was proselyting with Elder Phan, and in his area, I got to see some of the Angkor Wat.

  We are really working hard on finding families to teach. As we pray and search hard though, the Lord is truly answering our prayers in a very large abundance. We are meeting tons of new people and families, and we are really looking forward to getting the chance to meet each of these families and hopefully start teaching them.
Ok, I don't know to what extent the warranty covers my shoes, but they are... a little bit messed up.

Yes, I have beat the life out of my "soul", ha ha! Actually, the soles are pretty good, just cracked. We really don't do a lot of walking. I've done most of my walking barefoot because of mud and water. I think that it is cracked from the Cambodian squat, but I don't know for sure.  I have mostly been wearing these shoes while in the country.
Um, the week after next week, or maybe it's two weeks? is Thanksgiving, and if we want a dinner, we have to make it on Wednesday.  I hope to make a pumpkin pie :) We're excited!  Have a great week!